The Lady and the Tiger
by Negative Creep
Summary: After the Captain absconds with AVALANCHE, Shinra comes looking for him. All they find is Shera.
1. Chapter 1

_**The Lady and the Tiger**_

_Chapter 1_

It was six o'clock in the evening when the blue men arrived at Shera's door. This was rather surprising for a number of reasons; namely, Shera had been told to expect them half an hour earlier. It was the last time she trusted the Shanghai-Tei's owner for accurate information, and the first time she ever suffered a gunshot wound to the kneecap.

They clomped into her home as if they owned it, three of them altogether. Two were dressed in the baby blues and heavy visors of basic Shinra grunts. The third was a completely different creature. He wore a Mideean-tailored suit, carried a walking stick, and radiated danger like heat miasma off hot tin. Shera knew him for a Turk the moment she clapped eyes on him. Worse still, _he_ knew that _she_ knew.

The picture Walking Stick flashed her was an old one. Captain Highwind hadn't smoked Lady Lucks in at least two years. Gabbianis were his brand now, or at least they had been the last time Shera had seen him.

"I expect you're thinking I know where the Captain is. The raw fact of the matter is, I don't. I haven't seen him in six months, and I haven't the foggiest when I will again." It took a supreme effort to keep her voice from shaking, but somehow Shera managed. She had gotten a lot of practise at it since the Captain left. "Would you like some tea? I've got a kettle on the hob, I need to go take it off before it scorches."

She could feel them flanking her as she moved across the kitchen. The kettle had just begun its whistling death-rattle, gurgling and shaking on the stovetop like a mad patient strapped to a gurney. Shera shut off the gas, brought several mugs down from the cupboard - she had gone through this routine so many times it was almost instinct - and swung the red-hot kettle as hard as she could into Soldier #1's face. His flesh actually _sizzled_ under the metal. Try as she might, Shera would never quite be able to forget that sound.

The second was luckier. He had his visor down, for one thing. Heavy-duty shatterproof plastic was no match for buckshot, however, and Shera's labcoat had covered a multitude of sins. This was the other thing that would haunt her dreams - the soldier's face exploding in a mass of blood, bone shards, and plastic. It came to pieces in wet hunks. A memory of throwing stones at abandoned warehouse windows in Junon flashed through Shera's memory and was gone.

Her ears were still ringing from the shotgun blast when the Turk's bullet caught her behind the knee. She screamed, shameful to say. The leg crumpled underneath Shera's weight like sodden newspaper, depositing her onto the linoleum hard enough to make her teeth shake.

Walking Stick's shoes were jet-black and shiny. Tiny fisheyed kitchens glinted in their depths. He click-clacked across the tiles, retrieved the kettle from its landing spot beside the groaning Shinra grunt, and proceeded to pour himself a cup of tea.

"You know," he said, sounding almost cheerful, "this is really, really good. I mean, usually I'm more of a coffee and vodka kind of guy, but this is really goddamned excellent tea. You mind if I make a phone call?"

The last thing Shera saw before darkness took her was the rocket's tip gleaming through the open window, painted red-gold by the setting sun.


	2. Chapter 2

_**The Lady and the Tiger**_

_Chapter 2_

She dreamed of her father, for the first time in over a year. He was beckoning to her from the deck of his ship. The words he shouted were unintelligible, but still Shera tried to decipher them, moved forward through the water even though her legs felt weighed down with iron and lead. Waves taller than the barquentine's mast crashed onto the shore, drowning out his voice. Soon there was nothing but murky water all around her, filling her lungs and ears and eyes. Direction ceased to have meaning.

Shera did the only thing she could think to do. She swam upwards, pulled against the darkness as her father had always told her to.

(_Fire burns and water bloats and we all go tumbling down)  
_  
Breaching consciousness was an awful lot like breaking through the surface into bright sunlight. It left you dazzled and disoriented and temporarily unaware of where the hell you might have come up.

The walls were white tile. They shivered and buzzed disconcertingly under the florescent lights, shaky, amorphous-looking things. A bare metal bedpan sat in the corner. Ominously, it seemed to be the only thing in the room save Shera herself. She tottered to her feet, hissing as sharp pain shot through her right leg. Someone had bandaged the wound while she was out, but it still hurt like Hades and all his gremlins were jabbing and scraping underneath her kneecap with red-hot pokers. The dressing was first-rate work, not too loose and yet not so tight that it would cut off the circulation to the rest of her leg. Somehow this didn't make Shera feel any more confident about the situation.

A door at the far end of the cell slid noiselessly open. It lay flush against the wall, so cleverly concealed one almost wouldn't have noticed it unless they were specifically looking for such a thing. The engineer in Shera was grudgingly respectful of the design, though she never would have admitted it.

In clicked Walking Stick, looking as cheerful and disheveled as ever. Shera shrank back as far as she could go, palms pressed against the cool slickness of the wall tiles. Lancing pains ivied up and down the length of her thigh, tendriling into her hip. She tried not to wince.

Walking Stick gave her a bright smile.

"And how are we this morning, missy? How's that leg feeling? I got shot in the ass once, and lemme tell you, I sure as fuck felt it the next day." He ran a hand through his hair – red it was, almost painfully red against the white of the ceramic walls – and squatted down on his haunches, surveying Shera with what seemed like mild amusement. "Name's Reno. You want a Cure or something?"

She didn't answer.

"Okey-dokey. Should I call you Shera, or Miss Storey? We're probably gonna be spending a lot of time together, you might as well start giving in to my masculine charms right now. It's useless to resist."

"How do you know my name?"

"Hey, she _does_ have a tongue! You'd be shocked right back on your mousy little ass if you knew just how much information tends to be available on former Shinra employees. Shera Storey, aged twenty-nine, daughter of a Junonian sea captain. Orphaned at eight years old, raised in Junon Orphanage until age sixteen. Ran away to Midgar to become a rocket scientist." He looked up at her and waggled his eyebrows. She could have slapped him, _wanted _to slap him, but all the muscles in her body had turned to brine. "Worked on Project Highwind and Palmer's Big Limp Dick, otherwise known as the Shinra Space Programme. Suffered second-degree burns over almost half your body during the 26 malfunction. Care to let me have a peek at those? Rrrowr."

"Piss _off._"

"Your loss." Reno shrugged, gave his hair another perfunctory sweep with his fingers. "I didn't come here to get cozy anyway, though. We need some information from you. Have you ever heard of the terrorist cell known as Avalanche? I think you have. I think you know them very well."

Stony silence. Shera bit her tongue and thought of the honest faces of her friends, big burly Barret and steadfast Tifa and gentle Aeris and even Cloud, confused but friendly through and through. The Captain, with eyes blue as the sea after a storm, sharp-tongued and grizzle-cheeked and all she wanted in the world. She honestly had no idea where they were, but even if she had, Reno would have never pried the information out of her. Death would have taken her stubborn soul first.

"I'm afraid I don't have what you want. I already told you this before."

"Oh c'moooon, don't give me that. I didn't fall off the gysahl truck yesterday, babe. You've been living with Cid Highwind for, what, six years? He's a dick, from all accounts, but there's no damned way he's just stopped checking in with his little chickadee. That dog won't hunt."

"I'm not his 'chickadee' or anything of the sort. I'm his assistant."

"Whatever. Just tell us where the hell they are and you can go home, no harm, no foul. I'll even throw in a bottle of antiseptic for that hole through your knee."

"No."

Reno slapped her hard across the mouth with the back of his hand.

"For fuck's sake, just _do it. _It's almost lunchtime and I've got burgers to eat. My patience is wearing thin."

Shera glared up at him. She took careful aim at his shining shoes and spat a glob of bright red blood at their tips. Reno rolled his eyes, sighed heavily.

"Lady, look. I've been doing this shit since I was fourteen. My first job was wiping out an entire Wutainese family, including the family dog and the retainer's infant son. A few months ago I pushed the button that turned Sector Seven into more of a goddamned scrapheap than it already was. Now, I like you, you've got a hell of a lot of spunk for an egghead, but I've got my orders. We can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. It doesn't make a whole lot of difference to me which you choose."

More silence.

"Alrighty, then. You might want to hand me those glasses, we don't want them getting busted."

_I don't care what happens. I'll live my life for him_.

It ran through her head like a mantra. By the time Reno exited the cell, she was clinging to it like a piece of driftwood, riding away on the sea of darkness. Her father's ship was nowhere in sight.


	3. Chapter 3

Reno's previous experience with meglomanical, power-hungry leader types – he had been a pretty avid film fan in his younger days, at least when he could manage to sneak into the backs of various Midgar cinemas without getting collared – had led him to believe that most if not all of them kept sinister, vaguely threatening pets. Mondo Hansome would break into the arch-nemesis's secret lair and there the villain would smugly sit, stroking a cat or a cobra or some manner of poisonous tapir. They seemed as mandatory as giant doomsday guns, or henchmen.

Rufus had a budgie.

Budiges were cute, colourful birds. Some enterprising owners would teach them to ring bells, or perch on an outstretched finger. This particular budgie was neither cute nor amiable; it had pulled out most of its own feathers years before and resembled nothing so much as an ill-tempered and partially drowned chicken. Reeve lost a wedge of earlobe to it during an internal meeting; Elena had been run screaming out of the office on at least three separate occasions by the fluttering devil. Sometimes Reno thought Rufus kept it around just because it made people uncomfortable.

It was perched on the back of its master's chair this evening, looking as evil as ever. Rufus, scribbing away at some internal memo, didn't even glance up from his desk as Reno stepped into the room.

"Good evening, Reno. Having any luck with our lady friend?"

Reno shrugged and rubbed his knuckles. The budgie looked him over with its beady little eyes and hissed. He shot it the finger.

"If I had any fucking luck I wouldn't have cut my knuckles on that stubborn bitch's teeth. She's either tougher than you think or honestly doesn't know anything, and either way she's not gonna be talking again until morning. Mind if I raid your bar?"

Rufus made a fluttering motion with his free hand. Taking this as an affirmative gesture, Reno poured himself a glass of bourbon – shots were for pussies – and slammed it down. The burning was a blessed distraction from the things he was trying not to think about and the feelings he was most definitely trying not to feel. Reluctance, for one.

The budgie flapped closer to where Reno was standing. He mentally calculated how much trouble he might get into for wringing the little fucker's neck.

"How much longer are you gonna have me on this thing, anyway? I mean, Rude's already in Junon, can't you find somebody else to shake down? What about that Gainsborough woman, Elmyra?"

"Reeve is already working on that end of things. If it doesn't pan out, however, we need an alternate source of information. That is the task you are accomplishing, or not, as the case may be." Rufus raised his gaze from the paperwork and shot Reno a bemused look. "Is it too much for you?"

"Please. I hope you're fuckin' joking."

"Good." He pushed himself to his feet and walked to the window, hands folded behind his back. "Do whatever it takes. We need to know where they're going, and we need to know as soon as possible. Is that clear?"

"Crystal." Reno debated with himself for a moment, wondering if he should say anything. "Erm ... but what if it turns out she really doesn't know anything? I mean, I'm pretty good at reading people, and ... fuck, I dunno. She just seems like she's telling the truth. You threaten to slit a girl's nostrils, she'll usually talk, you know?"

"If that is the case, or if she continues to refuse speaking, have Hojo take her away. He's always looking for new subjects, it'll keep him out of my hair for awhile, at least. Oh, and Reno?"

"Yeah?"

"Please release Bruntsfield before you leave. I believe he's having a hard time breathing with your fingers around his neck."


End file.
